Dexter
has been cozying up to Arthur Mitchell,
the Trinity Killer, while using the alias of "Kyle Butler".

When
things go bad between the two (after Dexter thwarts Arthur's attempt to kill
a child), Trinity goes hunting for Kyle.

Of
course, Kyle isn't real. Dexter just made up the name,

But
unfortunately, there is a man with the same name in the phone book.

And
Trinity, not knowing the name is fake, goes to Kyle Butler's house.

As
he is taking the screen off a window to break in, the real Kyle Butler
shows up. He sees some stranger breaking into his house, and naturally
becomes agitated. He accuses Trinity of trying the steal his stuff.

Arthur
falls back on his usual avuncular charm, and tries to laugh it off as a
mistake (as he heads for his car), but Kyle is having none of it. He tells
Arthur that he's going to call the police.

That
was a mistake.

The
next time we see the house - it's the interior, and Kyle is lying dead
on the floor.

Dexter
is doing his usual blood spatter investigation, when Vince mentions that
the victim's name is Kyle Butler.

Dexter
is shocked. He realizes Trinity went hunting for him and killed this
innocent man.

Q.
What is it actually in real life?

A. A residential
home - but nowhere near Miami.

Q.
Where can I find it in real life?

A. This house
is located just a couple of blocks from the ocean, at 206 Knob Hill,
in Redondo Beach, California.

It's on the
south side of Knob Hill, at Broadway.

The house is
about five blocks south of the Redondo Pier,
where they filmed the scene of Trinity kidnapping a boy from an arcade.

[
Warning: This is a private home. Do not trespass
on their property, knock on their door,
or do anything else that might disturb the residents. ]

Q.
How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A. This
was a hard one.

I knew the number
was 206, since you could see it on the house, in the scene. I also knew
that there was a white apartment house with a red-tile roof on the corner
across the street (you can see that during the conversation between Kyle
& Arthur).

So, I thought
it would be relatively easy to find. It wasn't.

First, I went
to Long Beach, of course, where they film most "Dexter" scenes.
I checked every 206 from Belmont Shore to downtown Long Beach, then
north to Pacific Coast Highway, but found nothing.

I moved on to
San Pedro, and checked every 206 from Cabrillo Pier north to the city limit,
and east & west, as well - with no success.

Then I moved
on to Pacoima, where they had filmed the scenes of Trinity trying to bury
the boy alive. It wasn't there.

I didn't think
to look in Redondo, because in the four years they had been filming "Dexter",
they had never filmed near the South Bay beaches, except for that one arcade
scene at the pier. And even then, they used locations in other cities for
places that were supposed to be near the arcade. (For instance, Trinity's
church, which Dexter passes while following Arthur to the pier, was
actually in Hollywood.) So I wrote off that one pier shoot as an odd exception
to their usual routine, and didn't think to look there for Kyle's house. A major tactical mistake on my part.

Almost a year
later, Rick (a fan who has found a
number of locations) and I started kicking the location around again. We
had both tried to find it earlier, without success, so we redoubled our
efforts.

I retraced my
steps in Long Beach and San Pedro, in case I had somehow missed it. But
while I was looking, Rick managed to find it.

How? He noticed
that the IMDb listed Redondo as one of the locations for this episode,
and also noticed what might have been an ocean breeze stirring Arthur's hair in the scene.
So he started checking 206's in Redondo, using Bing's aerial photos, and
looking for that red-tile roofed apartment house across the street. And
of course, he found it. (Thanks, Rick!)

Here,
by the way, is a photo I shot of that apartment house across the street
(and the matching screenshot):